While my wife and I were again camping for several days with our friends on their property along Hobble Creek, I went for a couple of nearby hikes. The first was to the top of Shining Mountain, the name Paul’s family gave to the steep and rugged ridge towering above the property, rising up between the Left Fork of Hobble Creek and Granger Canyon. He placed a geocache on top in 2011 and since then only three people had found it. I actually attempted to climb nearly straight up to the ridgetop in August, the same weekend I hiked Spanish Fork Peak, but I failed. There was a trail visible in the historical imagery in Google Earth that got close to the ridge and I assumed that would get me close enough. It took a lot of bushwhacking to even get to the “trail,” which turned out not being much of a trail at all, and I gave up when the steep and loose rocky slope was too sketchy. Here are a few photos from that attempt:
My starting point
Heavy bushwhacking
View down the Left Fork of Hobble Creek
The “trail”
Provo Peak ridgeline
View of the trailer below
Upon my return in late September I came with a different plan. I knew before my first attempt that there was an easier but longer way to get on top of the ridge and this time I tried that route. I walked more than half a mile up the paved road before starting to climb up the hillside, taking a few of the criss-crossing deer trails up the steepest part of the mountain. Once the terrain leveled out enough I just climbed straight up through the sagebrush until reaching an old and overgrown road. That led me to another road that looks like it’s still in use, and then another overgrown road where I saw a huge wolf spider and some old bear scat.
No Trespassing 😀
Barely discernible game trail
Left Fork road below
Game trail
View down the Left Fork
Straight up the hill
Very overgrown old road
Road still in use
Another old road
Huge wolf spider
Bear scat
That road ended and I followed the top of the ridge over a few ups and downs until I reached the geocache. I didn’t have cell service and couldn’t connect to the wifi on my Starlink which was 700′ below and not in my line of sight, so I sent Traci a message using my inReach letting her know I’d made it to the cache. After signing the logbook and while gathering some rocks to hide the container better, I heard the buzzing of Paul’s drone which he flew up to check on me. I hiked back down the way I’d come up, carefully following my GPS track so I could get on all the right deer trails for an easy descent.
Provo Peak (back-left)
Ridgeline
Another game trail
My goal in sight below
The geocache
My logbook entry
View down Granger Canyon toward Powerhouse Mountain
Last steep bit down to the road
The next day I hiked to the summit of Day’s Mountain, which is the informal name of peak 7,412′ surrounded by Day’s Canyon (and left fork), Kirkman Hollow, and the Right Fork of Hobble Creek. I found the details for this hike on Peakbagger.com, which I’ve only recently found to be a very useful site for trip planning. Other websites I read said to use the parking lot at Cherry Campground as a trailhead for hiking up Day’s Canyon but I arrived to find there’s a $15 day use fee. I said fuck that and drove another 1/4-mile up the road and parked at a gravel pullout. That required crossing the creek on foot to get to the trail but it wasn’t a big deal. I hiked up Day’s Canyon, the first part of which appeared to be an old road that eventually turned up a side canyon while the trail continued straight. Autumn colors were very pretty in some areas while others were still green. The trail climbed gradually through the trees with no real views to speak of, until reaching a clearing near a little drainage that leads away from the trail and toward Day’s Mountain.
Right Fork of Hobble Creek at the Day’s Canyon trailhead
Old road in Day’s Canyon
Leaves on the trail
Rocky crossing
Stream on the trail under a fallen cottonwood
Exposed roots
Left and Right Forks of Day’s Canyon trail
Slug
Trail over the talus
Almost into the sun
A cow trail goes north up the side canyon, through some oak brush and past a spring, then traverses the steep slope southwest of the summit. On my way up I spooked several buck deer that were hanging out near the spring, and for the second day in a row I saw some old bear scat. Several times I stopped to remove dozens of houndstongue burrs from my clothes–it seemed futile because brushing up against a single plant just covered me in stickers again each time!
Dead thistle
First view of Day’s Mountain
Houndstongue burrs
Faint trail through scrub oak
Water troughs at a spring
A few bucks
View down the canyon
Cattle trail
View down Day’s Canyon
Bear scat
View down Day’s Canyon toward the mouth of Hobble Creek
The trail tops out in an open sagebrush meadow but the route to the summit cuts back to the southeast and climbs through oak and maple shrubs without much of a trail. I shwhacked up to the ridgeline and then easily followed it to the summit. There I had a bit of cell service so I played on my phone for a bit while I enjoyed my PB&J (orange marmalade, in case you weren’t wondering 😀 ), then started back down the ridgeline.
Trail through scrub oak
Bushwhacking
Hornet nest
Houndstongue burrs! Again!
Colorful maple and oak
View over Granger Mountain to the Provo Peak ridgeline
Day’s Mountain ridgeline
Almost to the top!
Summit of Day’s Mountain
View into Springville
View over Kirkman Hollow to Strawberry Ridge
It was hot out in the open sun and it was a relief to reach the main trail where the remainder of the hike down was shaded. I got back to the truck a little after 1 PM, having hiked 7.3 miles with 2,400′ elevation gain, and I’d only seen a few people during the entire hike: a pair of women on the lower trail as I was just starting out, and a few guys on dirt bikes from a distance while I was sitting at the summit. It was a welcome change of pace doing a much easier hike than I’ve been doing lately. There probably aren’t a lot of easy hikes left for me to do in the Hobble Creek area so next time I expect that I’ll be doing something a fair bit more difficult.
Green and red
Rocky trail
Trail waffle
Looking up
Side canyon
Photo Gallery: Shining Mountain & Day’s Mountain